Cool Stars 14 - Submitted Abstract # 166
This version created on 05 October 2006

A New Population of Young Brown Dwarfs


Kelle Cruz, American Museum of Natural History 
J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Caltech/IPAC
Dagny Looper, U. of Hawaii
Adam Burgasser, MIT
Subhanjoy Mohanty, CfA/Harvard
Lisa Prato, Lowell Observatory
Adam Solomon, Yale University

We report the discovery of a population of late-M and L field dwarfs
with unusual optical and near-infrared spectral features that we
attribute to low gravity -- likely uncommonly young, low-mass brown
dwarfs.  Many of these new-found young objects have southerly
declinations and distance estimates within 60  parsecs.  Intriguingly,
these are the same properties of the recently discovered, nearby,
intermediate-age (5-50  Myr), loose associations such as
Tucana/Horologium, the TW Hydrae association, and the Beta Pictoris
moving group.  We describe our efforts to confirm cluster membership
and to further investigate this possible new young population of brown
dwarfs.  While the current sample was identified serendipitously, we
recognize near-infrared color trends that will aid in uncovering more
of these young objects in future searches.

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